


plenilunium

by parrishes



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: F/M, Grim Reapers, Personification of Death, Tifa's Harem Valentine's Day Fic Exchange, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29385414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrishes/pseuds/parrishes
Summary: When the moon is full, he appears to her. [Rufus/Tifa, Grim Reaper/personification of death AU]
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Rufus Shinra
Comments: 19
Kudos: 20
Collections: Tifa's Harem Valentine's Day Fic Exchange





	plenilunium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PotatoVanGogh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotatoVanGogh/gifts).



> _When death confronts her, she has never seen  
>  the meadow without the daisies._  
> —"Persephone the Wanderer," Louise Glück

I. moon as man 

When he first comes to her sickbed, platinum and black against the white of the full moon, she does not know what he is. He stands over her, looming, masculine, dominant, and one hand comes to rest on her exposed throat. He is beautiful, pale and pale blond, a ~~god~~ man conjured straight from the depths of her imagination.

“Soon,” he tells her, and pain flares through her as he squeezes her airway shut, her eyes drifting closed. 

When she opens them again, breathless, clouds have drifted over the fullness of the moon, and her dream-vision is nowhere to be found. 

II. moon as woman

She has been told the illness runs in her blood. Men’s sicknesses are of the sun, that is what the doctors tell her—bright, burning, angry. Hers is a burrowing thing, silver like the moon, quiet like a woman should be, as it spreads itself through her body.

Tifa has never been one to misbehave. 

Later, as her father brings her tea and pulls her blankets to her collarbones, she asks him if the same disease took her mother when she was young. He says _yes._

Trembling fits, graduating weakness, lung spasms…

 _Hallucinations._

When she wakes, he is standing by her bed again. This time, she is strong enough to speak. 

“Who are you?” she asks, noticing that he casts no shadow but thinking nothing of it. In this heavy, tangible darkness, it doesn’t seem so strange. 

He doesn’t answer her, but he does laugh. His eyes travel down, taking in the way the blankets drape over her figure. 

“What a waste,” he says, still chuckling, still looking at her in a way that makes her feel suddenly warm. “Oh, what a waste.”

“I’m sorry? Who _are_ you?” 

“I’m yours,” he says, suddenly earnest, eager as a puppy, reaching out to tenderly caress her face. “I’m yours, Tifa, I’m for you—” 

When the moon clouds over while he’s in mid-sentence, like a woman, he disappears. 

III. moon as knife 

The weaker she becomes, the more she sees him. 

He is the one who will claim her when she dies, she learns. He goes by Rufus. 

(He was human once, she gathers, but it was so long ago and there is so little mercy left in him—) 

As she diminishes, he grows stronger. His touch is realer, firmer; he speaks more clearly. Her moon-sickness grows worse—shaking fits that knock her to the floor, burning lungs, her mother walking around in a daze even though her mother has been dead for fifteen years. 

The first time she coughs herself bloody is the first time he kisses her. The pain in her lungs is like a knife, and after that she cannot leave her bed. 

When the fever takes her, sending her into a state of waking delirium from which she will not recover, he takes her as well, and when they climax together she knows that the pain from his teeth in her flesh is _real._

(Death is a knife, too.) 

**Author's Note:**

> Latin " _plenilunium_ ," n. "full moon" 
> 
> happy valentine's day tato!!! i hope you like your gift ❤❤❤ and happy valentine's day to all the harem members! i'm so glad to be a part of such an awesome community of people ❤❤❤


End file.
